On November 17, ten state attorneys general signed a letter addressed to Vice President-Elect Mike Pence and the entire Trump transition team. The topic at hand: online gambling.

More specifically, the letter asks the government to rollback a 2011 Department of Justice Office of Legal Counsel opinion that determined the 1961 Wire Act only applied to sports betting and not to other forms of online gambling.

The letter was brought to light on Friday evening by the Poker Players Alliance.

Bombastic rhetoric, misinformation fills pages

The letter states:

“In the dark of night on Christmas 2011, the Obama administration overruled 50 years of practice and precedent when a Department of Justice (DOJ) Office of Legal Counsel opinion claimed the Wire Act only applied to sports betting,”

The opinion overruled nine years of precedent, not 50. It wasn’t until 2002 that the DOJ interpreted the Wire Act as applying to all forms of online gambling. Neither the 2002 or 2011 opinion changed the Wire Act, only how it’s interpreted.

The OLC review was the result of a request by Illinois and New York, with the two states seeking clarity on whether they could sell lottery tickets online.

“The 2002 DOJ interpretation was overruled in federal court several times, and legal analysts have questioned the opinion’s validity since it was offered, particularly the expansion of the Wire Act not just to the Internet, but beyond sports betting.”

The letter uses the typical bombastic language we’ve come to expect from the anti-online gambling crowd, including fears of rampant underage gambling and the proliferation of criminal activity.

Notably, in the three states with legal online gambling , and the four states with legal online lottery, none of these doomsday scenarios have come to fruition.

In 2014, 16 attorneys general (including the Attorney General of Guam) called for a federal online gambling ban. In 2015, the number of attorneys general supporting a federal online gambling ban dropped to just eight.

Upshot

The letter is certainly not a positive sign.

But with only 20 percent of the attorneys general in the United States signing on to the letter, and with support still well below what it was in 2014, it’s not something online gambling advocates need to wring their hands over.

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Steve Ruddock -
Steve covers nearly every angle of online poker in his job as a full-time freelance poker writer. His primary focus for OPR is the developing legal and legislative picture for regulated US online poker and gambling.